News

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Aug 09, 2018.

A new paper from Professor Ulf Büntgen and Dr Paul Krusic presents innovative methodologies and data sets from recent research around big game hunting, tree-ring formation, and mushroom fruiting. These could assist with monitoring how ecosystems are affected by a changing autumnal climate. The full article is published in Climate Research.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Aug 09, 2018.

Professor Tom Spencer, from the Department's Cambridge Coastal Research Unit, has had a letter published in the Guardian, calling for a wider and more integrated discussion around different types of sea defences in the face of rising sea levels and stormier conditions.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Aug 06, 2018.

A team of researchers, including Professor Clive Oppenheimer, has found that the chemical composition of gases emitted from volcanoes – which are used to monitor changes in volcanic activity – can change depending on the size of gas bubbles rising to the surface, and relate to the way in which they erupt. The results, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, could be used to improve the forecasting of threats posed by certain volcanoes. The story has received coverage from a number of organisations, including Chemical and Engineering News, Science Daily, and the Daily Mail.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Aug 06, 2018.

Sarah Radcliffe, Professor of Latin American Geography, recently organised a workshop on 'Public Policies and the Challenge of Equality in Diversity' in Ecuador. The Minister for Economic and Social Inclusion, Dra Berenice Cordero, opened the event, and senior public officials presented current public policies for equality, and discussed the challenges, throughout the day. The workshop was organised as part of a British Academy-Isaac Newton Trust research project entitled 'Learning to Leave No One Behind: tracking intersectional inequalities through Ecuador's Buen Vivir public policy' (2016-2018).

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Aug 02, 2018.

Congratulations to PhD student Ragnhild Dale (SPRI), who has been awarded a Vice Chancellor's Public Engagement with Research Award for her work in the "Trial of the Century" project, a mock trail of a lawsuit over Arctic oil.

Congratulations to PhD student Ragnhild Dale (SPRI), who has been awarded a Vice Chancellor's Public Engagement with Research Award for her work in the "Trial of the Century" project, a mock trail of a lawsuit over Arctic oil.

The Institute is pleased to announce that on 18 October 2018 it will be hosting a one day conference in memory of Alan Baker, and celebrating his mathematical legacy. An eminent number theorist, Fields Medal recipient and Fellow of Trinity College, Baker passed away in February of this year aged 78. Details of the conference can be found via the poster below.

Paul Coxon and Tongtong Zhu have been selected as semi-finalists in the 2018 Postdoc Business Plan Competition, run by Cambridge Enterprise with the Entrepreneurial Postdocs of Cambridge (EPOC). These postdocs and their projects now advance to the next phase of the competition along with 10...

We are really pleased to announce that Dr Cate Ducati has won the Royal Microscopical Society Medal for Innovation in Applied Microscopy for Engineering and Physical Sciences for her outstanding scientific achievements in applying microscopy in the fields of engineering and physical science....

Artificial intelligence could offer faster and cheaper ways of finding new cancer drugs, according to researchers who successfully used AI to identify an inhibitor for an enzyme that is over-expressed in a range of tumours.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 30, 2018.

Polar Encounters, an exhibition of 200 years of polar art featuring work from the SPRI art collection and by the Friends of SPRI artists in residence, is open at Bonhams in London. This free exhibition brings together European and Inuit artworks from the last two centuries to explore the Arctic, and eight of our recent artists in residence have their bold new works on show from both the Arctic and the Antarctic. The exhibition is open Monday-Friday, 10-4 at Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street, London from 30 July - 17 August.

Polar Encounters, an exhibition of 200 years of polar art featuring work from the SPRI art collection and by the Friends of SPRI artists in residence, is open at Bonhams in London. This free exhibition brings together European and Inuit artworks from the last two centuries to explore the Arctic, and eight of our recent artists in residence have their bold new works on show from both the Arctic and the Antarctic. The exhibition is open Monday-Friday, 10-4 at Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street, London from 30 July - 17 August.

Dr Owen Saxton, who has worked closely with many of members of the Electron Microscopy group over many years as a 'Senior Affiliate' of the Department, has been awarded the Lord Rayleigh Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics. This is to recognise his contributions to the Gerchberg-...

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 19, 2018.

Professor Philip Gibbard has appeared on the BBC World Service discussing the newly- ratified Meghalayan Age. The Late Holocene Meghalayan Age, the most recent unit of the Geologic Time Scale, began at the time when agricultural societies around the world experienced an abrupt and critical mega-drought and cooling 4,200 years ago. Listen to Professor Gibbard's World Service interview (starts at 48:30). The story has been covered by many other outlets, including Newsweek, The Hindustan Times, The Better India, the Daily Mail and Science News.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 19, 2018.

CCRU's Jamie Pollard and Professor Tom Spencer have published a new paper in WIRES Climate Change that discusses the potential for Big Data Approaches to address the challenges of flood risk assessment and emergency response.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 18, 2018.

Dr Charlotte Lemanski contributed a plenary talk on 'urban infrastructures' at the Summer Institute in Urban Studies 2018, held at the National University of Singapore, 15-18 July. She spoke about her research on infrastructural citizenship, sharing the plenary with Prof Jane M. Jacobs (NUS-Yale) who spoke about her work on infrastructure production in Singapore's public housing programme. This is the 4th Summer Institute in Urban Studies, providing an opportunity for early-career scholars to investigate leading-edge theoretical and methodological questions in the field of urban studies.

The Royal Society's prestigious Davy Medal goes this year to an atmospheric chemist who has shown "pioneering leadership" in furthering our understanding of the depletion of the ozone layer and the substances that destroy it.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 16, 2018.

PhD student Morgan Seag is working to improve diversity and inclusion in polar research. She was one of several Cambridge geographers attending POLAR2018 last month, a conference of 2500 researchers, science supporters, and policymakers working on the Arctic, Antarctic and global cryosphere.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 16, 2018.

In July 2018, Dr Richard Powell appeared as a witness before the UK Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee's inquiry into the Changing Arctic, to provide expertise in UK Arctic social sciences and humanities and advise on formation of UK Arctic research and policy.

PhD student Morgan Seag is working to improve diversity and inclusion in polar research. She was one of several Cambridge geographers attending POLAR2018 last month, a conference of 2500 researchers, science supporters, and policymakers working on the Arctic, Antarctic and global cryosphere.

In July 2018, Dr Richard Powell appeared as a witness before the UK Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee's inquiry into the Changing Arctic, to provide expertise in UK Arctic social sciences and humanities and advise on formation of UK Arctic research and policy.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 13, 2018.

The International Union of Geological Sciences, and its Commission on Stratigraphy of which Professor Philip Gibbard of the University of Cambridge is Secretary General and participating member, has approved three new ages. The Late Holocene Meghalayan Age, newly-ratified as the most recent unit of the Geologic Time Scale, began at the time when agricultural societies around the world experienced an abrupt and critical mega-drought and cooling 4,200 years ago.This 200-year climatic event affected agricultural societies that formed after the last Ice Age, forcing the collapse of civilizations and migrations and regenerations in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yangtze River Valley.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 13, 2018.

A new paper on the water- energy-food nexus by PhD student Oliver Taherzadeh, Professor Keith Richards, and Dr Mike Bithell has been published by the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling. Read Oliver's blog about the research.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 12, 2018.

The new NERC-funded RESIST project, led by the Department's Iris Möller, will investigate resistance of coastal salt marshes to extreme storms. Salt marshes contribute to the wave buffering function of shallow water regions on the coast, thus acting as a first line of defence against storm surge waves. Their buffering role protects shorelines from the impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise and stormier seas. However, little is known about how resistant these buffers are to continued battering by waves and tidal currents. The project will supply the first ever data on the resistance of marsh structures to waves, showing which soil and plant types cause greater or lesser stability. The team will be able use the data to create a "physical vulnerability index" of coastal wetlands.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jul 11, 2018.

Geographer Richard Powell will appear today, 11 July 2018, as a witness before the Environmental Audit Committee's inquiry into the Changing Arctic. The inquiry is assessing the UK Government's Arctic policy, and examining whether the UK, as one of the Arctic's nearest neighbours, should be doing more to protect this vulnerable region. Richard will provide expertise in UK Arctic social sciences and humanities and advise on formation of UK Arctic research and policy.

Geographer Richard Powell will appear today, 11 July 2018, as a witness before the Environmental Audit Committee's inquiry into the Changing Arctic. The inquiry is assessing the UK Government's Arctic policy, and examining whether the UK, as one of the Arctic's nearest neighbours, should be doing more to protect this vulnerable region. Richard will provide expertise in UK Arctic social sciences and humanities and advise on formation of UK Arctic research and policy.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jun 29, 2018.

Congratulations to PhD student Han Cheng, who has been awarded the 2018 RGS-IBG Hong Kong Research Grant for PhD fieldwork for his project " Producing International Development Knowledges: China Agricultural University", looking at Chinese international development partnerships in Tanzania and India.

By Vincenzo from Isaac Newton Institute News.
Published on Jun 28, 2018.

Thursday 28th June 2018 - 14:15

It is with great sadness that we report the passing away last week of Professor Mila Nikolova, Research Director at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and Microsoft Fellow, Simons Fellow, and long term participant (August to December 2017) on the recent INI programme on Variational Methods and Effective Algorithms for Imaging and Vision (VMV). Mila is known for her substantial contributions in optimisation, in particular the analysis of solutions to optimisation problems and application of optimisation techniques in image processing and inverse problems.

Dr Robert Hoye is one of five young engineers who have had an outstanding impact in their respective fields early in their careers and received this prestigious award at the Royal Academy of Engineering Awards Dinner on Wednesday 27 June.

Selected intervals in the past that were as warm or warmer than today can help us understand what the Earth may be like under future global warming. A latest assessment of past warm periods, by an international team of 59 scientists from 17 nations including Cambridge Earth Sciences' Professor Eric Wolff, shows that in response to the warming ecosystems and climate zones will spatially shift and on millennial time scales ice sheets will substantially shrink.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jun 21, 2018.

Papa Momodou Jack, a Gates Cambridge Scholar who will start his PhD with the Department this October, discusses his research on access to healthcare in Ethiopia, which will focus on Community-Based Health Insurance.

Dr Thomas Bennett has won the ISIS Science Impact Award for his work using neutrons to help reveal the structure of a melt-quenched metal-organic framework glass - the first example of the new hybrid glass family.

The ISIS Impact Awards are presented by the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source ...

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jun 18, 2018.

Biogeography and Biogeomorphology Research Group- Easter Term Seminar Join Professor Haigh (Associate Professor in Coastal Oceanography, University of Southampton) for a seminar on "Lessons learnt from 100 years of coastal flooding in the UK". Mon 25 June, 12 noon-1pm Room 101, Hardy Building, Downing Site Please see attached poster for further information. ALL WELCOME

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jun 15, 2018.

A new book from Dr Alan Baker, A French Reading Revolution? The Development, Distribution and Cultural Significance of Bibliothèques populaires, 1860–1900, explores the history, geography and cultural significance of library associations in France. Portrayal of the general situation in France as a whole is paralleled by detailed work on the unpublished archives of nine départements widely located throughout the country.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jun 11, 2018.

Cambridge's Tree-Ring Group, led by Prof. Ulf Büntgen from the Department of Geography, as well as colleagues from Germany (Freiburg) and Switzerland (Birmensdorf), published a pioneering study on long-term recruitment dynamics of Arctic dwarf shrub communities in the journal Dendrochronologia. Encouraged by their new findings, Cambridge's Tree-Ring Group will continue to expand their fieldwork beyond forests.

The University of Cambridge, alongside the Cambridge Departments and Colleges, invite you to the Cambridge Postgraduate Open Day on Friday 2 November 2018. The day is open to all those seeking to apply for postgraduate study at the University and will provide opportunities to meet department...

G5a - the distinctive coarse-grained, pink granite exposed at Shap in Cumbria - has long been a favourite igneous hand specimen for Earth Sciences teaching in Cambridge. New research uses the age of zircon crystal formation to suggest a long gestation period in the mid-crust before its final emplacement 405 million years ago.

From Geography at Cambridge - news - Geography.
Published on Jun 07, 2018.

Professor Bhaskar Vira recieved the Royal Geographical Society's Busk Medal on Monday (04 June 2018), at a ceremony at Lowther Lodge. Professor Vira was presented with the award for interdisciplinary research on economy, environment and development.

Sam Gyimah MP, Universities and Science Minister for England, visited the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge on the 16th May 2018. During a tour of the Department facilities and laboratories, he met with postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers...

A new study of marine fossils from Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and South America reveals that one of the greatest changes to the evolution of life in our oceans occurred more recently in the Southern Hemisphere than previously thought.

Ian Willis and Alison Banwell have been awarded, respectively, a 1-year sabbatical fellowship and a 2-year post-doctoral fellowship to undertake collaborative work with Waleed Abdalati and Michael Willis (no relation!) at the Co-operative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and Ted Scambos at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. They will advance their current work investigating the surface hydrology of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the surface hydrology and stability of Antarctic ice shelves.

Registration is now open for our next Armourers and Brasiers' Cambridge Forum - a free event on Tuesday 12th June which focuses on advancements in Materials Science and includes the Kelly Lecture which will be given by Prof Peter Bruce on "Materially better batteries" as well as a series of...

Applications are invited for a Research Assistant/ Research Associate to work under the direction of Dr Gareth Rees, for a British Council funded research project mapping the distribution and spatial characteristics of forests in northern Russia, using remote sensing techniques. The closing date for applications is 25th May 2018.

Dr Poul Christoffersen will co-lead one of eight projects in a new joint UK-US research programme, that is one of the most detailed and extensive examinations of a massive Antarctic glacier ever undertaken. Dr Christoffersen's project, Thwaites Interdisciplinary Margin Evolution (TIME), will investigate how the margins of the Thwaites Glacier drainage basin will evolve and influence ice flow over the coming decades.

Many questions remain unanswered about the mid-mantle, 600 to 1200 km below Earth’s surface. Does this layer decouple convection between the upper and lower mantle? How are processes here linked to plate tectonics and volcanism?
Cambridge Earth Scientists are using seismic constraints to determine the compositional heterogeneity in the mid-mantle. They hope to identify processes which could obstruct or divert convection 1000 km down.

A remarkable 120-year record of resilience to environmental change in the world’s oceans has been uncovered within a group of marine organisms called brachiopods. Although they are not well known today, brachiopods have had considerable importance in the evolution of seabed life.

A new study of the Devon Island ice cap, led by a team from the University of Alberta, has discovered two subglacial bodies of water. These are the first subglacial lakes to be observed in the Canadian Arctic, and are estimated to cover areas of five and eight square kilometres respectively. The findings, co-authored by Director of The Scott Polar Research Institute Professor Julian Dowdeswell, have been published in Science Advances

A new study by researchers at the University of Liverpool, with contributions from Cambridge Earth Sciences PhD student Fiona Iddon, has identified the temperature at which cooling magma cracks to form geometric columns such as those found at the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland.

A planned scientific expedition to the Antarctic to visit and study the Larsen C Ice Shelf - and explore the area where Endurance, Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship was last seen - will be led by Professor Julian Dowdeswell next year. Professor Dowdeswell, Director of the Institute and Professor of Physical Geography, will lead the international Weddell Sea Expedition 2019 next spring. It will bring together leading researchers from the Institute as well as the Nekton Foundation, the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the University of Cape Town and the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Professor Dowdeswell explained that the expedition will survey the underside of the iceshelf using underwater submersibles, to ascertain whether conditions leading to the calving of an enormous iceberg from Larsen C in 2017 means that the shelf may collapse: "Iceshelves butress the interior of the Antarctic icesheet, they effectively act to hold back the ice that flows from the interior of the Antarctic to the edge. They are in some senses vulnerable because not only can they lose mass by the production of icebergs at their edge but also because they're floating, beneath they have ocean water flowing in and that ocean water can lead to meltrates at the base of a number of metres per year and this is what's been happening to some areas of Antarctica." Further coverage also features on BBC News, Telegraph and Independent websites.

Several staff, postdocs, PhD students and research associates within the Department of Geography and Scott Polar Research Institute will be showcasing their research at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) 8-13 April 2018, the largest geosciences meeting in Europe. Details of the presentations and our research groups are available.

Dr Michael Bravo will be running an interactive talk, Inuit Visions of the Polar World, at the Heong Gallery, Downing College. The talk will take place at 6pm, on Thursday 10 May 2018. Please register if you would like to attend.

An important new chemical dataset from the basalt lavas of the Icelandic Borgarhraun volcano is helping Cambridge earth scientists John Maclennan and Dan McKenzie with colleagues from the US and Iceland estimate the carbon dioxide content of Earth’s mantle. Borgarhraun is one of the few places in the world from where it is possible to probe the mantle CO2. This new data, published in the latest issue of Geology will improve understanding of the link between volcanism and long-term climate change.

Dr. Richard Powell is recruiting FOUR three-year Postdoctoral Research Associates (PDRAs) to work on the ERC Consolidator Grant project, ARCTIC CULT (Arctic Cultures: Sites of Collection in the Formation of the European and American Northlands) to start in October 2018. Further details are available online. The closing date is 30th April 2018.

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the 2018 Abel Prize to Robert P. Langlands (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) “for his visionary program connecting representation theory to number theory”.

Dr Michael Bravo's Pan Inuit Trails project, which maps part of the extensive trail network used for Inuit travel across the North American continent, is featured in the Guardian article 'Counter-mapping: cartography that lets the powerless speak'. You can find out more about the project at paninuittrails.org.

A growing network of lakes on the Greenland ice sheet has been found to drain in a chain reaction that speeds up the flow of the ice sheet, threatening its stability. Researchers from the SPRI and others across the UK, Norway, US and Sweden have used a combination of 3D computer modelling and real-world observations to show the previously unknown, yet profound dynamic consequences tied to a growing number of lakes forming on the Greenland ice sheet.

As part of the verification of technical aspects of the design of Cavendish III, two large concrete slabs have this week been cast on the site of the new building. The area depicted will ultimately form the base of the cycle storage under the raised plaza.

A team of researchers from the Scott Polar Research Institute have published a new paper investigating the causes of rapid lake-drainage events on the Greenland Ice Sheet. For this, the research team assembled a variety of different remotely sensed datasets to derive a series of controls that might explain why some lakes drain rapidly and others do not. However, among the controls investigated, they were unable to find any statistically significant drivers of the lake-drainage process. The team includes PhD student Andrew Williamson, Dr Ian Willis, Dr Neil Arnold and Dr Alison Banwell.

Piers Vitebsky, Assistant Director of Research (Retired) at the Scott Polar Research Institute, has been elected an Honorary Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russia.

The vegetation of our planet irrevocably changed surface processes on Earth. New research suggests the evolution of land plants in the Ordovician caused an increase in the volume of mud preserved on the continents. This marked a change in global sedimentation, with implications for the study of sedimentary processes on our planet and beyond.

The deadline for the Debenham Scholarship and the Scott Polar Scholarship is 31 March 2018. Each scholarship is worth £7,614 (2018-19 rate) and will be awarded to the best applicant for the M.Phil. in Polar Studies who is not in receipt of another University award. By applying for the M.Phil. in Polar Studies, you will automatically be entered into the competition for these awards, as long as your application is received by the deadline.

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded studentship at the University of Cambridge, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Royal Society. The PhD studentship is one of six awards being made by the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with the Science Museums and Archives Consortium. The project is full-time, funded for three years and begins in October 2018. It will be supervised by Dr Richard Powell (Scott Polar Research Institute and Department of Geography, University of Cambridge), Dr Catherine Souch (RGS-IBG) and Keith Moore (Royal Society), with technical training support from Charlotte Connelly (Polar Museum, Cambridge).

Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and Professor of Physical Geography, has been awarded the 2018 Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London for significant contributions to the science through a substantial body of work. The Lyell Medal has been awarded since 1876 and is the Society's highest award for 'soft rock' geology. It was established with a gift from the distinguished 19th Century scientist Charles Lyell who wrote the 'Principles of Geology'.

The Launch for Richard Powell's new book, Studying Arctic Fields: Culturers, Practices, and Environmental Sciences will be held at SPRI at 4.30 p.m., Monday 26 February 2018. This event is kindly sponsored by the Independent Social Research Foundation and McGill-Queen's University Press. Please RSVP Jenny Dunstall to attend.

Elegant little sea butterflies, more technically known as pteropods, are important members of the marine ecosystem because they are so abundant and are a food source for other marine organisms, especially whales.

A new paper from Professor Phil Gibbard, "Pleistocene glaciation of Fenland, England, and its implications for evolution of the region", demonstrates for the first time that the form and scale of modern Fenland, East Anglia, is due to glaciation during the late Middle Pleistocene period, around 160,000 years ago.

Congratulations to Robert (Bob) White, Professor of Geophysics and Fellow of St Edmund’s College, who has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's Gold Medal for a lifetime of distinguished achievement in solid Earth geophysics.

Ancient rock strata exposed within the World Heritage Site of Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, Newfoundland, record one of Life's very first communities of seabed dwelling macro-organisms. Known as the Ediacaran biota, it is around 565 million years old.

A box full of diamonds, volcanic rock from Mount Vesuvius, and the geology guide that Darwin packed for his epic voyage on the Beagle are on display at the Cambridge University Library as part of the first major exhibition to celebrate geological map-making.

An international team of researchers has scanned and digitised two million records held at the Scott Polar Research Institute from pioneering aeroplane radar expeditions that criss-crossed the frozen continent in the 1960s and 1970s. The digitized data extend the record of changes at the bottom of the ice sheet, such as the formation of channels as Antarctica's ice flows, by more than two decades. The work could also help researchers get a better handle on how the ice sheet might respond as global temperatures rise. Read more in Nature and on Stanford University's website.

Since 20 November 2017, INI has played host to the art exhibition "Form in Art: Art of Form". Run concurrently with the "Growth form and self-organisation" programme, it has aimed to "explore the relationship between form, as understood mathematically, and art" and features works from 10 leading contemporary artists.

At the exhibition's launch event, and shortly before he returned to his native Sao Paulo, we interviewed one of the contributing artists: Manoel Veiga.

A simple mixture of organic waste, such as chicken manure and zeolite, a porous volcanic mineral, has been developed into a powerful bio-fertiliser which can also reclaim semi-arid and contaminated land.

To mark 100 years since John E Marr became Woodwardian Professor, on 30 October 1917, a selection of documents have been digitised and will be available to view on the Sedgwick Museum website from 30 October.

A new survey and analysis of global radiocarbon dates derived from ocean-dwelling micro-organisms is providing important new measures of the difference between the ocean today and 20,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age.

Around 571 million years ago life first made a grade-change from organisms that were only a few centimetres in size to those that grew to two metres or so high. The organisms that were able to take off in this way were the extinct rangeomorphs, softbodied frondose organisms that grew rooted in the seabed of late Precambrian times.

Scientists have discovered that significant changes can occur in the composition of volcanic eruptive plumes whilst circulating high above the atmosphere. Nicknamed ‘plumerangs’, the evolution of such plumes represent a previously unappreciated health hazard.

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